Blessed is the servant who loves his brother
by Bye11
Summary: "...And the younger brother must help to pay for the pleasures of the elder." (Jane Austen)
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: I am at the point in which I don't really care who Elena ends up with. I don't particularly like her anymore as a character. One of the things I still love in TVD is the bromance between Damon and Stefan. I am interested to see how this last hurdle will play out and so this came out. It's choppy but in a way it's meant to be. It's in Stefan's POV and ideally I might want to add Damon's POV but I am not sure I'll be able to write him in a decent way. **

**Enjoy my first foray in Stefan's mind! **

It surprised him.

He was talking with Elena animatedly. He was telling her that she had to ask Damon to let her go. That just like wearing a vervain necklace this was a necessary step for her to regain her choice. That she had to understand that this sire bond would never go away otherwise, she would never again be Elena and forever be Damon's Elena.

"Right and instead the one you call Elena isn't just Stefan's Elena? The one that chose you even after you became a ripper and terrorized her, the one that forgave you everything, the one that completely trusted you?"

He flinched at her words.

"You chose all of those things, Elena. I was always the greatest champion of your free-will."

"The Champion of my free-will. How could I forget? So when you decided that my brother had to become a ruthless killer so that I could return human, you were following my free-will, right? The Champion of my free-will wouldn't do anything other than that. You need to get off your high horse, Champion, and listen to me. I am in love with Damon. When I kiss him it's not any less real than when I kissed you. It's not servant Elena that sleeps with him, it's me. You need to accept it."

It surprised him.

It shouldn't have. Elena had let him go because of his feelings for Damon. Of course she had acted on them. Of course she had slept with him. Of course there wasn't any word except love to describe those feelings. Of course.

It still devastated him.

He had known. Hell, he had sent her on a roadtrip with him, to let her figure out her feelings. He had known the looks she had sent him, the trust she had felt towards his brother. He had known. The sire bond had been just the last strand of hope he had clung to. His last delusion. He had known.

It still made him cry.

Without even looking her in the eyes, he disappeared from the school parking lot and found himself in the woods, where he could take it out on the trees, where he could scream, where he could vent out his anger throwing rocks and devouring animals.

The sun was setting and animal blood was still dripping out of his mouth when he found himself on the ground, his back sustained by a large tree. His brain conjured an image.

Him, Damon and Katherine during a cool autumn day. He had arrived from the house and found the Princess reading in the garden. His brother, on the seat next to her, watching her, a book open in his hands for cover. Katherine had perceived him first. She had given him a smile, and gone back to her reading. Damon had waited for him to take the seat next to him. Then, with that proud and mischievous smirk of his, he had taken his hand, pointed briefly to a sentence before leaving the book closed on his lap, standing up and asking Katherine to go for a walk.

"I have given my young brother something to think about", he said, winking at him, looking conspiratorially at Katherine and then moving away with her.

Stefan opened the book at the page his finger was still marking and started reading:

"_ ...and the younger brother must help to pay for the pleasures of the elder._"*

At the time, he had laughed at Damon's antics. Today, the sentence had an haunting quality. Just as haunting was his situation. Just like that afternoon, more than a century before, his brother had the girl and he was left with nothing. His phone was vibrating in his pocket. He turned it off without even looking at the caller-id. He wasn't ready to talk to anyone. Commiseration had taken hold of him and didn't want to let go.

Morning saw him still in the same position, his eyes bloodshot, his thoughts still entangled. Somehow during the night his prospective had shifted. He had expected his anger for his brother to consume him, he had expected that this day would start with an epic confrontation. He had expected his desire to kill him to outlive the night.

Instead it hadn't. This morning Stefan understood Damon more than ever before. This morning he comprehended how his brother must have felt when Katherine and then Elena had rejected him. This morning he felt the incomprehensible urge to apologize to him, to tell him that he had been an ass in judging his actions. Because being the unchosen Salvatore meant excruciating pain and any reaction was somehow justified.

It was easy now to forgive him.

"_ ...and the younger brother must help to pay for the pleasures of the elder._ "

But it had been just the opposite. Damon had paid more than his dues over the years. He had watched him with Elena. He had risked his life for the girl that was in love with his brother. All of that after having discovered that Katherine hadn't been pining for him. He had suffered in relative silence for so long, he wondered why he hadn't turned off his humanity.

"I hated you. I still do... But not because you forced me to turn...Because she turned you. It was just supposed to be me, Stefan. Just me"

It was easy now to understand him.

Funny how the world works sometimes. His brother had betrayed him. He had stolen his girlfriend right from under his nose. He hadn't waited before inviting her into his bed. He hadn't given him the heads up. He had tried to cover it all up.

It was easy now to hate him.

Nevertheless, he felt now closer to him than he had in decades, centuries even. Back when they still shared everything, when they were each other's rock.

It was easy now to love him.

Would he ever be able to tell his brother that? How would it go?

"I hate you, brother, because she was supposed to love just me. Only me. But I understand. I finally understand and I forgive you for hating me. You had no other choice. When it hurts this much, there is no letting go, hate is the only answer."

"_Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior._"**

Stefan was no novice to pain and guilt. He had survived his share during his supernaturally long life. But he knew that he could not bear to watch the two of them be happy as they seemed to be, at his expense. It was beyond his capabilities.

There was only one thing to do. He would have to leave Mystic Falls, to leave Caroline, his new Lexie. He would have to leave the only woman he had ever loved without compulsion behind. Most of all, he would have to separate himself from him.

His nemesis. His ally. His enemy. His savior. In a word, his brother.

"_...all the evil and good of their earliest years could be gone over again, and every former united pain and pleasure retraced with the fondest recollection. An advantage this, a strengthener of love, in which even the conjugal tie is beneath the fraternal. Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connexions can supply_."***

*Mansfield Park, Chapter III

** This is Catullus 85. Wikipedia's translation is: " _I hate and I love. Why I do this perhaps you ask I do not know but I sense that it happens and I am tormented_"

***Mansfield Park, Chapter XXIV


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I don't know if any of you is interested in the second chapter of this story. I struggled with Damon's point of view and I am still deeply unsatisfied with the result. In any case, since it's finally finished, I put it up. This is set after 4x08 and the characters are, of course, not mine. **

Right and wrong were words that had no place in Damon Salvatore's dictionary. They implied a moral judgment that he refused to give. Life, especially for supernatural people, was a long, long way to hell. What this paved path into suffering drove people to do was not something for others to discuss. He also hated the word conscience. That meant that there was somehow a moral code that was more acceptable than others. Damon had lived centuries without a conscience and it had felt just fine. Now everything had changed.

It was because of her.

The girl that was currently entwined in his arms had fought for him to see that the conscience that he had sworn off was still there, dormant at times, but definitely there. It was because of her that he now knew without a shadow of a doubt that he had to refrain from doing something, that indeed there was a voice inside him that could guide him to be a man deserving of love. He still was reluctant in employing those pesky little right and wrong words. Not this morning.

It was because of him.

His younger brother, the one person in his life that had always, if sometimes twistedly and secretly loved him. It was because of him that the word that kept pounding in his head this morning was "Wrong".

He had stolen his girl. Wrong. He had refused to let her go after discovering the sire bond. Wrong. He had let Stefan believe that he would definitely do what was right. Wrong.

It had been different with Katherine. They had experienced their first love together, in what was just another step of the adventures of the Salvatore Brothers, united till the end. Katherine had destroyed them, he had hated Stefan with the acid aftertaste of the burning desire of being the "picked Salvatore" but nothing had felt wrong. Action, reaction in an infinite circle. No reason to assign moral codes to his behaviors. But now, that 5 letter word was tormenting him. Wrong.

It was because of her and him.

Elena was the polar opposite of Katherine in a sense. She didn't try to make men fall in love with her. It just happened. They were attracted by her incredible good looks, her intelligence, her strength and loyalty, her willingness to be challenged if necessary. Damon was a man that happened to spend time in her company. His fate had been clenched at "hello".

Falling for her had never been conscious but the alternative was now unconceivable.

Stefan had fallen in love with her completely and this time no compulsion of any kind had been involved. Or, at least, no supernatural compulsion. He had seen it immediately. Stefan was smitten and committed to make this relationship with Elena last for how long she wanted it. He was ready to kill for her, to die for her, even to let her make her decisions, secure in the epicness of their love. He had seen his younger brother healed of a centuries-old wound because of her. For that, away from prying eyes, he had smiled. At the time he was focused on getting Katherine back. He had imagined once or twice family parties with the two doppelgangers and the Salvatore Brothers at the same table. Nights to remember, without a doubt.

He had loved her first, she had loved him first. Nothing else should matter.

Except it did. Because Elena had been the one person capable of understanding that beneath the cockiness and the jokes there was Damon. Beneath the plans and the cruelty there was Damon. Beneath the bad sibling label there was the Damon that had picked Stefan up when he was a boy, the one that had taken blame for some of their young adventures so that Stefan wouldn't get punished, the one that despite his deep-hearted solitude and intense longing for his brother's company had let him go to war alone, so that he wouldn't interfere in his progress.

Beneath the mask, there was the Damon that wanted to be deemed as worthy of love as his brother.

Elena had somehow penetrated deep into his psyche and found that Damon and brought him back to life. He had responded with the simplest and most complicated feeling there was. Unfettered love.

Beneath the mask, there was the Damon that wanted to be chosen.

There was the rub because Elena belonged to his brother. For her to choose him meant that she had to let Stefan go. She had to break his heart.

So, for a long time, he had watched them together. Sickeningly in love as in a bad pop song from some overhyped boy-band.

"_Race d'Abel, aime et pullule!_  
_Ton or fait aussi des petits._

_Race de Caïn, coeur qui brûle,_  
_Prends garde à ces grands appétits_."*

So, for a long time, he had bewared of those intense desires and stayed as far as the leash that linked him to Elena would allow.

His will had stood many a challenge but no Cain in the world was built to refuse Elena when she came willingly to him, when she swore that her feelings for him were real and not due to that stupid sire bond. He couldn't turn her away when she had given him that sense of peace that he had forgotten ever existed. She had quieted his demons, she had opened the door to a world of bliss that he had never truly experienced. He had been shy in admitting that the adjective that he had so many times sneered in hearing now belonged to him. There was no turning back from that situation.

"_And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?_"**

No matter how much he tried to deny it, he had been. He had been his brother's keeper anytime their father had been unable to perform his task as a parent. He had been his brother's keeper whenever he had protected him, he had been his brother's keeper when he had tried to bring him back from his ripper benders.

What he didn't want to admit was that Stefan, too, had been his keeper. There whenever he had been in real danger, ready to abandon Elena and become the worst possible version of himself to give him a chance to survive a werewolf bite. Would they still have a chance to be each other's keeper now that he had betrayed him?

"_And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground_."**

Would Stefan hate him as he had hated him for Katherine?

"I hated you. I still do... But not because you forced me to turn...Because she turned you. It was just supposed to be me, Stefan. Just me"

Would Stefan turn a mirror on him, repeating those words whose poisoning ability was stronger than all the vervain in the world? Would he be forced to deal every day with the fact that he had inflicted on his brother the violent pain that he had endured for centuries?

Would he forever be condemned to a half-life?

The woman in his arms. His brother outside. Elena and her caresses and kisses. Stefan and his betrayed, heartbroken look.

His infinite joy. His infinite misery.

"_And Cain said unto the LORD, My punishment is greater than I can bear_."**

*Baudelaire's Abel et Caïn. The English translation that I was able to find is

_"Race of Abel, love, pullulate! _  
_Even your gold has progeny._

_Race of Cain, with the burning heart, _  
_Beware of those intense desires."_

**Genesis, 4

**A/N: I know that Elena here is not in the picture and she seems like a puppet of the two brothers. That wasn't my intention. I wanted to explore the relationship between the siblings. It wasn't also my intention to make Damon come out as a monster. I love him on the show and I tried to explore his motives. The situation in which the writers have put him in is terrible. If this looks like somehow a mean bashing of his character, you can blame my lack of talent.**


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